« It’s hard to remember how things actually happen anymore, because there’s so much mind control and so many media agendas, » he continues. « There’s a line in that song that goes, ‘My thoughts are misguided and a little naive.’ That’s the snarly look you get from an expert when they accuse you of being a conspiracy theorist. In America, they still use the conspiracy theorist’ accusation as the ultimate condemnation. I’ve been reading this Gore Vidal book [Dreaming War], and I know Vidal is always accused of being a conspiracy theorist. But the evidence he uses is very similar to the evidence used by a lot of well-respected British historians. Yet they still call him crazy. To me, that’s part of what ‘Myxomatosis’ is about – it’s about wishing that all the people who tell you that you’re crazy were actually right. That would make life so much easier. » This self-analysis is noteworthy, because it speaks to where Yorke is coming from intellectually. However, it avoids one trenchant question: What does mind control have to do with a virus that kills rabbits? The answer is « nothing. »

« I remember my parents pointing out all these dead rabbits on the road when I was a kid, » Yorke says. « I didn’t know that much about the virus, or even how to spell it. But I loved the word. I love the way it sounded. The song is actually about mind control. I’m sure you’ve experienced situations where you’ve had your ideas edited or rewritten when they didn’t conveniently fit into somebody else’s agenda. And then – when someone asks you about those ideas later – you can’t even argue with them, because now your idea exists in that edited form. »

Thom : « It’s actually a short story kind of thing that I wrote and then cut up. And I never write short stories. About the only one I’ve ever written. I used to write them at University. In fact, I managed to blag my way on a course for creative writing on University, just because I didn’t want to do Spencer. What was his name ? Spencer… yeah, something like that. Very old, very big, thick book. I was not having any of that. Anyway, where am I ? (…) »

Caught in the center of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go by
What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?
You seem to ask.
I make a sharp reply,
Then clean my stick. I’m glad I can’t explain
Just in what jaws you were to suppurate:
You may have thought things would come right again
If you could only keep quite still and wait.

Thom : « A lot of that was experiencing being on the outskirts of the whirling vacuum, which is current politics, really. When you get to the center, or you start to sort of see the center, you know, like a tornado, there’s just basically nothing there. And ’Myxomatosis’ was really sort of born out of that. Born out of this idea like… well, again I guess, like ’Punch-up’ as well, it’s like ’well, I was there, and no, it wasn’t like that’. But yet… I must be ill, because what I saw and what was reported was a totally different thing. Very specifically provoked by something that happened a few years ago, the ’Drop The Debt’ thing, that just stuck with me when we went to Cologne. I mean, I’ve talked about this before, how all these nice old ladies and quakers and stuff were all there protesting the G7 or 8… I can never remember who they dumped off last. We handed in this petition with millions of signatures, or whatever, to Schröder at this thing in Cologne. And there was a small riot… there’s a protest, that turned into a riot, back in London. Reclaim The Streets were involved in all that, I’m quite sure they weren’t involved with the rioting. But somehow the British press, obviously the Murdoch papers in particular, because they love this sort of shit, were just writing it up as if all these old ladies and all these nice quakers were somehow anti-capitalist lunatics – and it was all part of the same coordinated protest – which was just nonsense, you know. And the whole thing was just written up so badly and everyone was ignoring the fact, that there was actually millions of people’s fixed signatures on this thing. It was… I don’t know. It just stuck with me how utterly powerless people are to really represent what goes on, if other people elsewhere see fit… if they see a nicer and more convenient story to be written another way, they can write off the wishes of millions of people in a split second at editorial decision, which I feel is immoral. »

we boild the head
we dug into the meat
he did some of his card tricks
he shook hands with the excluded
gave them all some promises
his smiles must be made
of high tensile plastic
. he said :
oh man it was so nice
she ate me up for breakfast
i slept with hoo i like
i sat in the cupboard and wrote it down neet
just as ah saw it yeah just as ah saw it
but it got edited fuctup
strangled/beaten up

« Ed : »Well, it was a tricky one, because it was… the version that Thom did on it, it was – he demoed it – it was really sort of… it was very digital, it was very… it was really great, but it was a bit of a different beast, in a way. «

Thom : « The day I know how the others would respond to something, is the day it’s time to quit. But I don’t know that. Myxomatosis is a really good example of that. I didn’t expect them to wanna get into that track at all. And when we got together after they had some demos and stuff, that was the one that everybody said first ‘we gotta do that somehow, because that’s amazing’, and I was like ‘wow, really ?’ I was really surprised and really excited, cause it’s like, I expected them to wanna go near the song ones first, you know, and they didn’t. I don’t know where it is, but there’s certain points in that song where the drums keep flippin’ and stuff that… I think it’s some of the most exciting stuff we’ve ever done, really. »

Thom : « And then a song like ’Myxomatosis’ – when we did it in the studio, we kind of liked the sound of it but it really frustrated us, because we didn’t really understand where it was going. And then we played it live and the last three or four times we got this absolutely amazing reaction. It was like a train crash, you know ? »

And we wanted to incorporate the live thing. And the Tubeway Army thing was the perfect thing to do. But again, we had to find an approach to it, and we didn’t quite get it in L.A., but we eventually got to loop Phil’s drums, and then we did a sort of a live rough in the control room. And then other stuff was added. It’s that totally playing something in the spirit of how you think they might have made records in ’79, ’80, or whatever. »

Jonny : « That’s all playing around a lot with the idea of how keyboards used to be, they used to sound frightening, and Tubeway Army style, I suppose, or slightly out of tune. You forget that presumably in the 80s when keyboards were being recorded people would be playing them. And even if a band just had keyboards in it, they’d have to one at a time play keyboards onto tape, which is a really alien concept, because of computers and sequencing and how music is made today. So, that was done like that, pretty much. »

Car ce qui comptait c’était bien l’esprit que donne le clavier…

Jonny : « And it was one of those occasions where you’re recording, and the element you think is the key to the song, the rhythm, actually isn’t, and it’s in the detail. It’s just in the single keyboard lines. And as soon as they became overpowering and took over the song, the song started working. And the rhythm was just a way to lead you through the song, but it wasn’t the feature anymore. And suddenly it had this atmosphere attached to it, which is why it works, why it’s on the record, really. »

« When we got into programming, or spending like two or three days working on sounds before they went down, or whatever, towards the end it wasn’t such a big deal. Because everybody now understood the necessary boring bits in the recording, you know what I mean ? And it was sort of alright. [to Phil] Remember ’Myxomatosis’, when I’d spend more or less 24 hours straight cutting up what you’d done on the drums. And like… the only way to have got it done was just like ’ok, leave me alone and I’ll try and do it’. And it worked, it was worth doing. But that wouldn’t have happened before, when we were doing Kid A and Amnesiac, because it was an insecurity thing. People were like ’well, why are we spending two days doing this ? Why are we spending two days cutting up drums or programming this bit here or this bit there. Bla bla bla. And now it’s like ’yeah, whatever, fine. If that’s what we need to do, let’s do it’. »